Assignment Guide Marketing Planning

Introduction

Review changing perspectives in marketing planning

(1.1)
o Pls refer to Slides No. 3 Marketing Planning

Marketing Planning:
Basic Concepts
Traditional Company Orientation that uses communication asessential one-way-
a command culture- and also promotion to kick into the consideration to buy from
customers.Traditional marketing planning focuses on the four Ps which are
product, pricing, place and promotion. Through the four Ps, product will be alive
with features, benefits, packaging and brand name which are prepared carefully to
achieve customers considerations. Next step relates to pricing issues which is
decided with competitors and profit of company. Then marketing plan will include
the details to distribute the product in the right place and with the types of
attractive promotions to get attention in the marketplace.
Improved Model: Communication can now be two-way as decision makers regain
contact with customers.
Free Flowing Structure: Communication is now flowing in all directions as
project teams and matrix structures replace rigid hierarchical structures and
research is added to promotion to ensure two-way consumer communication
Orientation change
In time, it is recognized that the orientation towards customers has changed. The
traditional marketing practices have been replaced by modern practices where the
customers are placed in different positions.
 Business recognizes that customers are the only reason that company must play
any plan from building factories, hiring employees, assuring productivity and
engaging in any business activities with the planned targets and strategies. A
company will be seen successfully when they get their own customers, then keep
all customers stay with the company and grow number of customers bigger and
bigger in the future. All businesses know that the value they create is the value that
comes from customers.
More than that, companies define creating trusting relationships with customers is
always a needed thing. Besides, quality create confidence to provide reliability. In
one word, companies must assure the quality of product that is maintained and
even increased over a long period at a constant level. When a customer buy or use
a product or service that they found it meets their needs, they will have pleasure
with that product or service at good quality. The understanding of quality is
customer that defines the concept of quality standards for company to follow. Once
the level of product quality is kept continuously in present and develop in the
future, the pleasure of customers will increase and the trust on the brand name then
will stay stable.
The traditional Company Orientation only has one-way communication from
company to customer while Free Flowing Structure gets flexible communication in
two-way between company and their clients. Company with Free Flowing
Structure has more opportunities to deliver high quality products and catch up with
customer expectations when they create more flexible contacts with them. As there
 are different users which have different expectations of a provided product or
service.
According to the ISO 9000, series quality is defined as: degree to which a set of
inherent characteristics fulfills requirements. The concept of quality allows
company to respond to the expectations and requirements from customer needs.
Company then will need to consider ISO 9000 quality management that involves
all parties influencing the quality of the product. The producing processes
therefore are easily checked and improved.

Other basic concepts

Customer Oriented Culture: this is a group of actions that business takes to
reinforce its sales and service staff to gain both customer needs and satisfaction.
These are not transactions between company and customers, these actions let
business to create and have steady relationships. Business then makes pro-active
actions with strategies to reflect customer orientation which include developing
product quality, responding to customer complaints and queries respectfully and
dealing sensitively with community issues. Business needs to listen to their
customer, both internal and external to gain and build trust from customers. More
than that, company also has to focus on maximizing the value of customer
feedback in order to translate them into the context of behaviors.
 Market Orientation: is considered as business approach or philosophy or a
coordinated marketing campaign that will concentrate on identifying and meeting
the desires, hidden needs, wants of target audiences through product mix. The
organizational culture will find the ways or strategies to beat their competition
through creating of superior customer value. (Piercy). Compared with the past
marketing strategies that notice about setting up selling point for existing products,
the market orientation these days then focus on changing and developing products
to match the demands and expectations of clients.
Market-led Strategic Change: is a compelling logic that define a business will
run in a turbulent marketplace change with intense competition from new sources,
the traditional marketing text-book are unlikely to be effective. There are some
essentials components to re-thinking of marketing when facing up with the new
challenges such as:
Value strategy: a coherent and customer-focused to provide superior
value to each of businesss customers.
Market strategy: a clear and balanced strategic pathway to market to
prepare capabilities when making choices and clarify value
propositions to identify the relationship network
Internet strategy: integrate the potential of the website to offer multiple
channel to change buyer-seller relationships
Process strategy: design and manage process of decision making in
creating and delivering value to customer
Change strategy: an effective approach to make things happen in the
company, to attain competitive advantage with superior performance
when providing value to audiences.
There are some statements about market-led strategic change that any organization
needs to consider when running their business.
1. All organizations must follow the dictates of the market to survive
2. Organizational effectiveness can be pursued by being market-led, focusing on
the customer.
 3. Barriers to being market-led come, not from ignorance of customer
characteristics, but from the way organizations are run
4. Becoming market-led often needs an upheaval.
5. A deep seated strategic change is not just hiring a marketing executive.

(In-text Citation needed)

Evaluate Center for International Education capability for planning its future marketing
activity (1.2)
o Organizational Capability
Organisational Audit and Market Environment Analysis
(1.3 & 1.4)
o Theories & Application of SWOT, Competitors Analysis, PESTEL, Porters,
BCG, PLC
(In-text Citation needed)
Prepare a PPT slides related to the following tasks:
The main barriers to marketing planning (2.1)
Examine how Center for International Education may overcome barriers to marketing
planning (2.2)
Referencing at the end of the PPT Slides
Compile a report:
Explain why marketing planning is essential in the strategic planning process for Center for
International Education. (3.2)
A business succeed when it creates and keep the number of customers to be stable and
grown in the future. In order to keep the business run, the organization then need to
provide better value of product or service for the audiences than their competitors to get
competitive advantage, especially in the field of education business. Students care much
about the studying quality and the teaching process.
However, it is the environment in which businesses operate that is usually the main
problem as it keeps changing. In one word, any business wants to survive has to adapt to
the changes in the environment in suitable ways relevant to its processes. More than that,
organization also needs to make decisions about how to change the marketing mix in order
 to succeed in the market. This process of adapting and decision-making is known as
marketing planning.
There are several key issues that any business including CIE (Center for International
Education) should be addressed in its marketing planning process:
Where are we now?
How did we get there?
Where are we heading?
Where would we like to be?
How do we get there?
Are we on course?
Any business needs a marketing plan as it is always useful to many people in that
business. Marketing plan can help business to recognize the sources of competitive
advantage and gain commitment to a strategy. It also attain the needed resources to build
many things in the business with setting objectives and strategies that can be measured
through performance. Furthermore, marketing plan will help to inform stakeholders
anything they need to know when investing in such a project.
So, the marketing planning is such an essential issue in the strategic planning process for
CIE. As business always perform in a very complex and adverse environment. Even
performing in a field of education business, CIE needs to achieve profitable sales.
Obviously, the environment contains many inter-connected factors would affect much that
working process. For example, there are more and more Centers that want to get into
educational market and they will try to provide the best services to invite students to make
enrolment. CIE then must play the best marketing processes to not only provide the
suitable courses for new students but also keep old students to stay with the programs.

New Product Development

(3.3)
Marketing Plan (3.1,
3.4, 3.5)
o Executive Summary
 o Corporate Objectives
o Corporate Strategy Option
o Marketing Mix Recommendation
o Performance Measures
o Marketing Budget &Sales Forecasting

Conclusion

Use Harvard Referencing Style must be alphabetically arranged

http://invensity.com/coe-se-qualit%C3%A4tsmanagement.html
http://billionsunited.com/casestudies.php
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/different-perspectives-marketing-planning-80760.html
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/customer-orientation.html
http://www.customerchampions.co.uk/creating-a-customer-orientated-culture/
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/market-orientation.asp
http://www.investinganswers.com/financial-dictionary/businesses-corporations/market-
orientation-3779
http://www.tutor2u.net/business/marketing/planning_strategic_link.asp
http://asbpgp.pbworks.com/f/KR-ValuMrktg.pdf